When I was a young lad with scientific aspirations, I pestered my family to get me a telescope for Christmas. About a year later, after losing interest in blurry views of the moon, I asked for a microscope.
At some point I hit upon the idea of getting a pail of pond water and leaving it in my closet in order to grow algae. Great fun to look at under the microscope, I’d read somewhere.
The resulting stink didn’t play well in the household but those slides of slime were, if memory serves, pretty fascinating at 300x magnification.
I’ve thankfully grown out of the home experiments but my curiosity about the world beyond the naked eye remains.
I’ve got two telescopes now, which I’ve learned to use at lower powers so everything doesn’t turn into a fuzzy blob. And I still hanker after the microscopes in my Efstonscience catalogues but I’ve resisted the urge.
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
But I did fork out more than a few bucks for a good macro lens for my DSLR camera. Macro lenses allow photographers even of my limited skills to capture an impressive close-up.
I’m a big fan of arachnids so I’ve got a few good spidey shots. A furry-looking, pollen-coated bumblebee makes for a fascinating macro portrait as well.
But lately I’ve leaned toward more subtle micro-landscapes, such as the rolling hills of lichen on a tree, the complex arrangement of spiky structures that make up a burdock thistle or the intricacy of a coating of snow grains on a tree branch.
I’ve never been one to look straight ahead and stride down the path when I take a walk in the woods.
It might be my attention-deficit personality but I make a lot of stops along the way. And I’ve learned not to forget the camera because you never know what you might come across in the alternative universe of the natural world.
THE WANDERERS
Optical aid isn’t necessary to peer into the depths of our solar system this month. The five planets visible to the naked eye — Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury and Mars — all make an appearance in February.
All can be seen in the early evening, except for Saturn, which rises at 11 p.m. by mid-month.
There’s no mistaking Venus this month. Look west after sunset and that bright "evening star" is actually the second planet from the sun. Venus is shrouded by clouds of sulphur dioxide and droplets of sulphuric acid.
While those clouds likely make for a dreary view from the rocky Venusian surface, they act as a huge sunlight-reflecting mirror for observers on Earth. That’s why Venus is by far the brightest planet in our skies.
Next on the luminosity scale is Jupiter, which can be found above and to the west of Venus these nights. The King of the Planets has dominated the fall and winter skies but it’s closing out its 2011-12 show. Jupiter will sink lower in the west over the next couple of months before it gets lost in the sun’s glare.
But look to the other side of the sky to see Mars moving onto the celestial stage. This rusty orange orb rises at about 8:30 p.m. by mid-month in the constellation Leo.
Mars will get brighter and higher as spring approaches but the Red Planet is unusually far away from Earth during its 2012 appearance, so it likely won’t stand out this time around.
Last and likely least in terms of its visibility, you can catch fleet-footed Mercury in the west as long as you don’t wait too long after sunset. A good time to take a look will be Feb. 23, when this tiny planet will be found below a sliver of a crescent moon.
BIRD’S THE WORD
I asked for your bird reports last month and I was pleased to get several observations from across the province. One of the more unusual avian visitors was a yellow-breasted chat that took advantage of Sherry McInnis’s feeder in South Brookfield, Queens County, throughout late December and into January.
As Sherry noted, this colourful songbird was supposed to be enjoying the sunny climes of Mexico by this time, but the unusually mild weather seems to have confused some of our feathered friends this winter.
Roy Hemming was feeding fruit to a late-staying eastern kingbird in mid-January. This member of the flycatcher family should have been catching his flies in South America instead of enjoying the Hemming family’s generosity in Dartmouth.
Keep the bird reports coming. You can contact me at the email below. Soon enough we’ll be talking about those hardy avian types that have arrived earlier than usual in the spring migration.
SKYLIGHTS
Feb. 7: Full moon, known as snow moon or Snow Blinder (Mi’kmaq)
Feb. 9: Mars near waxing gibbous moon in evening east
Feb. 12: Bright star Spica 1.5 degrees above waxing gibbous moon in dawn east. Saturn above to left
Feb. 14: Last-quarter moon
Feb. 21: New moon
Feb. 23: Mercury below young crescent moon after sunset in southwest
Feb. 25: Venus below waxing crescent moon in evening southwest. Jupiter to the west
Feb. 26: Jupiter west of moon in evening southwest
Feb. 29: First-quarter moon
